ELENA

Alys was waiting for me in my dorm room. "How did it go?" she asked, clearly expecting me to admit defeat. I smiled. "He's coming."

Her eyes lit up in surprise. "I'd really like to know how you're doing it, Elena. I'd have sworn that Damon would sooner go on the bunny diet himself than help Stefan deal with this."

I merely shrugged, not knowing how to respond to that. I didn't really know myself. "I told you: You're judging too harshly. Damon's not as bad as he makes himself appear. So – how's Stefan? Anything new?"

"No. He's still cloistering himself in his room, refusing to even talk to me."Alys sighed. "I hope Stefan's not going to hate us for bringing Damon into this," she said in a strained voice, probably wondering if this had been the right thing to do. "Maybe we should have asked Elijah for help. He'd be more sympathetic to what Stefan's going through than Damon..."

"Sympathy might not be what Stefan needs right now," I mildly objected. "We had tried patience and understanding, and it clearly didn't work." The situation called for more desperate measures. We needed someone who wouldn't put up with Stefan's antics and wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. "We need Damon."

Before Alys could say anything else, there was a knock on the door. Talking of the devil... I got up to open it. There he was – with one of the party girls in tow. At least she was decently dressed now, and so was he. He must have driven fast to get here this soon. I felt immense relief. "You're here!"

Damon grinned. "You ask, I come. I'm easy like that! Where is he?"

"Locked up in his dorm room."

Damon slightly bent his head sideways, pointing to the hallway. "Well then – rescue team's here! Lead the way!"

Given that it was Sunday and most of the students had gone home for the weekend, the hallways were thankfully deserted. We climbed to the floor where the male students had their rooms and found Stefan's door still locked. "Stefan?" Alys called, knocking again. "Can you please open the door? We really need to talk to you..."

"Go away, Alys! I don't want to talk," came Stefan's voice from inside. It sounded totally unfamiliar – tense, aggressive, carrying an undertone of despair. Just as I had guessed, Damon didn't waste time with idle chat. He moved Alys out of his way and, with an almost playful shove of his shoulder, simply knocked the door open, splintering the wood around the lock. Again, the hidden strength in his vampire body caught me by surprise. It was so easy to forget what he was.

Stefan gave a outraged gasp and jumped to his feet with uncanny speed. I thought he was going to attack Damon, but before he could, Damon was already there, forcing him to back down by clasping his throat.

"Don't even try to mess with me! I'm older and I'm stronger, and besides, I came here help to you – though only because Elena so very nicely asked me to." Stefan eyes flew to me, immediately suspecting a hidden meaning behind Damon's words, which he clearly had intended to insinuate. I shook my head, trying to signal him not to let himself be provoked. "It's okay, Stefan – he's telling the truth. I'm sorry – but we had to do something..."

"Why don't you all just go to hell and leave me alone?"

"Because that's not gonna help you, stupid!" Damon scolded. "You need to feed – unless you're planning on starving yourself into a vamp-coma. That would take days, and believe me, it's ugly!"

"Haven't you done enough damage yet? This is all your fault! I don't want any more of your help, and I surely don't want to become like you."

"Trust me, you're in no danger of that!" Damon pulled a blood bag out of his jacket, ripped it open and sniffed at it. "Disgusting. I prefer mine at 98,6. Anyway," he shoved it against Stefan's chest, "take it, or suffer the consequences if you don't. Because sooner or later, you'll be jumping on Elena – or any other human who comes your way." Damon squeezed the tube and a little bit of its contents came out. "You know you can't resist it, so you might as well stop trying."

Stefan forcefully inhaled and went rigid. Unable to resist what was right under his nose, he ripped the blood bag from Damon's hand faster than I could look. Turning his back on us, he brought it to his mouth and gulped down the content as if it was a canned coke. I felt nauseated and averted my eyes.

"There you go!" Damon said, satisfaction in his voice. "Much better now, isn't it? – Now, this was just to give you the taste and relieve the worst hunger, so you won't go berserk on the real thing. Since I figured that Elena wouldn't volunteer after all her previous biting experiences, I brought someone for you." At Damon's glance, the girl stepped forward, almost in a flirty way. She stopped right in front of Stefan, who instantly recoiled, turning his hands into fists.

"You don't have to be shy – she's used to this, and she won't mind giving you a little of her blood."

"No. I can't!" Stefan took another step back, clearly horrified. "What if I won't be able to stop?"

"Then I will make you! Now don't be a sissy!"

Stefan was hesitating still, and Damon turned to me and Alys. "Why don't you two go downstairs for a while and give us some privacy, hm?" I nodded and pulled Alys along, trying to in vain to close the broken door behind us. She was reluctant to leave Stefan alone, clearly not trusting Damon, but still allowed me to drag her with me. If she'd been seriously resisting, I wouldn't have been able to budge her an inch.

"Relax, Alys!" I tried to cheer her up. "Stefan's gonna be okay. Do you think I would have called Damon for help if I didn't believe that? He's my brother, too."

Alys looked at me, mild surprise in her gaze. "Thank you for that..." she said softly and slightly squeezed my hand. I knew she wasn't referring to my trying to comfort her, but to the fact that I had just acknowledged her bond with Stefan to be as significant as mine. There was no doubt about that whatsoever. Alys had become the sister of his heart during all those years that Stefan and I had been separated, and notwithstanding the blood connection between the two of us, Alys would always be a part of it. If only she could find her peace with Damon, too. But the prospects for that hadn't brightened, no matter how good his intentions might be.

"What's he thinking – to bring along those prostitutes for feeding?" Alys gave vent to her annoyance when we were back in my room. We didn't really know what to do with ourselves. "Does he think it's making it any better if he's paying them for it?"

"Well, it's sure better than most of the alternatives," I pointed out. Not that I was a firm supporter of prostitution, but Damon was right. They were clearly consenting adults. Paying them to satisfy his needs was way better than simply taking what he wanted from someone who was unwilling.

"What's so wrong with Elijah's and my way of living? We get along fine without having to take advantage of anyone."

"Yes. But maybe Stefan will have to make that choice for himself. And he can only make a choice if he has an alternative, and that means he needs to have control over himself, even when faced with temptation. You've been around much longer. Maybe you have forgotten what it was like."

"How can you be so understanding about this?" Alys asked after a while, looking at me with a frown. "All this should freak you out."

I shrugged. "It does, every now and then. But, I don't know, somehow the way Damon is handling this – making it seem almost normal – is making it easier for me to accept what you are."

"Well, aren't I glad to hear that..." We both turned, noting that Damon had come down again, looking smug.

"How is he?" Alys asked. Damon leaned his back to the door and folded his arms in front of his chest. "Sated, for the time being. How lucky that I had someone around when she was needed."

"And where is she now?" Alys asked, sounding worried. Damon looked at her dispassionately. "Well, after finishing her off, we cut her into small chunks and put them in a plastic bag. I'm gonna dispose of it when I leave."

I rolled my eyes at him. Alys had probably meant to inquire if the girl was still with Stefan and if it was wise to leave him alone with her. As usual, he had chosen to purposefully misunderstand her. Observing Alys and Damon's interactions from the sideline, I believed I saw a pattern. Damon was always quick to assume that Alys thought the worst of him. Just instead of defending himself, he mostly reacted in a way that seemed to confirm all her suspicions – probably in order to hide that it hurt him. Which resulted in Alys being offended because he thought so badly of her. It was a really twisted thing they had going.

"I'm going to check on Stefan," Alys said, shooting Damon an angry glance and pushing him to move out of her way.

As soon as she was out of the room, I raised an eyebrow at him. "And I suppose you couldn't just have told her that you've put the girl in a cab and sent her home?" I asked a little ironically, pretty sure that's exactly what he had done. He shrugged, not answering, but since I had been looking out for it, I saw the tiny twitch in the corners of his mouth.

Damon lazily sat down on my bed, putting his arms behind his head. He scanned the room with curious eyes before focusing his attention on me again. "Are you sure you don't want to move back into the boarding house?" he asked. "This is really kind of cramped. I can't imagine how Alys managed to live here without jumping you. I surely would have..."

I didn't deem that worthy of an answer. As a matter of fact, the room seemed even smaller with Damon in it. But given that he had managed to shrink even the parlor of the boarding house with his mere presence, I couldn't see how living there would make much of a difference.

"The girls at your house – did you compel them?" I asked, trying to direct my thoughts to something other than Damon lying on my bed. It was kind of unnerving. "I mean... she was taking it all so calmly – as if she'd done it several times before. As if she knew."

"That's because she did."

"But I remember you saying that it's against this vampire codex to let any human in on the secret..."

"Well, there are exceptions to it – for sworn blood servants."

"Blood servants?" I choked. Damon innocently spread his hands. "Don't look at me – I didn't come up with the term. As you might remember, I always refer to Marisol as my housekeeper or my helping spirit. Besides, it's an old expression, though still better than the even older one. In ancient Rome and, admittedly so, before the civil war, they were called 'blood slaves'. Well, they weren't paid for their services, back then. Even vampires go with the times, to some extent."

"So you're saying there are actually people who volunteer to become someone's personal blood bag? Like your 'housekeeper'?"

"The world is full of vampire groupies – you wouldn't believe!"

"And whose 'housekeepers' might your party guests be?"

"You can swear loyalty not only to a living person, but to a legal body... a community, a company, or a club."

"Okay, so they really are prostitutes, then."

"If doing something for money that we wouldn't necessarily be doing without receiving it is a definition of prostitution, all working folk are prostituting themselves."

Looking at it that way, I had to admit that he had a point there. "If it's as simple as that, why does Alys have such a hard time dealing with it – even though nobody gets killed or harmed? They don't get killed or harmed, right?"

Now it was Damon who rolled his eyes. "No, Elena, they don't! It would kind of thwart the whole concept. As to Alys – you'd have to ask her, for I really don't have a clue. She refuses feeding from the vein, but does take the same blood if it comes in bags. Doesn't make sense to me."

"Maybe she sees a difference between an animal and a sentient being. Maybe it's the victim's knowledge that he is being used as a food source that makes it unethical for her."

"Then Alys is a hypocrite. If you can't slaughter a pig, you shouldn't be eating the meat." I raised my brow at that, not quite liking how Damon equated slaughtering pigs to feeding from humans. It made it sound as brutal as I imagined it to be. Not wanting to dwell on the images arising in my mind, I turned and occupied myself by tidying up a few things. Damon stretched out his legs and observed me silently.

"How long is it going to take before Stefan's back to normal?" I asked him, eventually facing him again.

"Depends on what you consider normal for a vampire." He shrugged and picked up my stuffed bear, Mr. Snuggles, and gave it a once over before placing it on his stomach to face him. I tried not to be distracted by that, either.

"Back to how he was before!" I clarified. "He's not himself like this."

"Yes, he is," Damon countered. "He just spent way too much time not being himself before. The Stefan you know, this good-behavior Stefan, rein-it-in Stefan, fight-against-his-nature to an annoyingly obsessive level Stefan – if you think that's all he really is, then you haven't been paying attention."

"He's not you. He's not even close."

"He doesn't want to be me. That doesn't mean, that deep down, he's not." He sighed, taking pity on me and my growing despair. "Look, he might still decide to sign Alys's version of the human rights act, but he should do so only after he's made sure that he can control himself in every situation. It might take some time to get there, though."

"So – what are we to do with him until then?"

Damon shrugged. "Stock up on blood bags. See to it that he feeds regularly. Make sure someone's with him when he's feeding on a human in the beginning – until he get's a feeling for it."

I hadn't realized that Alys had come back in until Damon's attention shifted to her. Turning, I saw her standing at the door, crossing her arms in front of her just like Damon had a while before, mimicking his pose. She smiled with fake cheerfulness. "Great!" she said in answer to his advise. "That sounds just like the job for you. Which leaves only one option: Stefan will have to move in with us."

"Us as in you and me?" Damon asked, frowning. "No way! I'm not gonna play babysitter for a toddling vampire who'll most likely spit his morals in my face every time I urge him to something as vile as to feed!"

"There's no other way. I'm not exactly an expert on the straight-from-the-vein thing. And what are we going to do during the week? Stefan can't possibly stay in the dorms in his current state. He'll end up practicing control on our fellow students."

"I fail to see how any of this is my problem."

"It will be, if Stefan loses control. You're in it, Damon, whether you like it or not. See it this way – there might even be a chance for you to get this male-bonding thing going. Isn't that how you guys normally do it? Drinking and picking up girls together?"

"I have absolutely no desire to bond with Stefan," he retorted indignantly. "And I bet my bottom dollar that Stefan will tell you the same with regard to me."

"Well, then don't bond – but keep an eye on him and help him to get back together. You owe it to him. You owe it to Elena."

Damon got up in one smooth, rapid move, shoving Mr. Snuggles into my arms. "Just to make it clear," he said, looking from me to Alys. "I don't owe either one of you anything. But before Elena goes all Bambi on me and starts groveling again: Fine! I'll give it one week, just to get Mr. Morality through the worst of it. But we'll do it my way."

"Which means?" Alys asked suspiciously.

Damon grinned. "Prostitutes, sorority chicks, and a lot of drinking."